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Roger Fitch Esq • January 8, 2008Our Man in WashingtonThe New Year brought the usual lists surveying the previous year’s events and people.This time they were heavily weighted towards crime and criminals.

For instance, The Talking Points Memo blog tallied Bush officials who have beensacked, disgraced, jailed, or seem headed for time behind bars.

CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) listed the year’s top-10scandals.

One enterprising blogger provided a handy 82-page list of accumulated Bush crimesthrough to the end of 2007.

And on New Year’s Eve, The New York Times acknowledged that “men in some of themost trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover-up the torture of prisoners byCentral Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickeningbehaviour.”

The Grey Lady continued:

“It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy [sic]in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the ruleof law and human decency.”

It was a blistering editorial, yet the torture of detainees would have been exposedyears ago if papers such as the Times and The Washington Post had not insisted onsugar-coating Bush administration misbehaviour.

After all, who gave us the words, “harsh interrogation” and “tough tactics”? Whoaccepted and justified their use on “recalcitrant” and “stubborn” prisoners?

It was the Post that genteelly said, “controversial interrogation techniques … includesome that cause extreme discomfort”.

At the very least, the alarm bells should have begun ringing when the so-calledtorture memos were disclosed in 2004. Instead, one of the authors, Alberto Gonzales,was confirmed as Attorney General in 2005.

After Gonzales left the White House, Bush’s lawyers openly discussed destroyingthe incriminating tapes, although there were some legal dissidents.

In any event the tapes are said to have been destroyed and, as the scandal unfolds,Georgetown law prof Jonathan Turley (pic) has prepared a helpful list of “six identifiablecrimes” that are available against Bush and his officials.

Without the torture memos, of course, there might never have been any torture totape.

One plaintiff has made the connection, and is bringing suit against the very manwhose tortured logic many believe led to tortured people.

Jose Padilla, the US citizen falsely imprisoned for three-and-a-half years in anavy brig, has sued the presumed architect of torture, the former Department ofJustice “lawyer” John Yoo, now a tenured law professor at Berkeley.

The lawsuit seeks to hold Yoo accountable for Padilla’s alleged torture during hisspell as an “enemy combatant”.

According to Padilla’s lawyers, Yoo (pic) was personally involved. Jurist has moreto say about this.

Even as the dust settles on the CIA’s alleged destruction of the torture tapes,that agency finds itself facing the additional charge of obstructing the 9/11 Commission,which specifically sought such information and was told it didn’t exist.

The bipartisan leadership of the commission attacked the CIA actions in a New YorkTimes op-ed.

Finally, Attorney General Michael Mukasey felt compelled to take action, and orderedan FBI investigation of the CIA’s destruction of the “torture tapes”.

Dahlia Lithwick reports on the AG’s choice for prosecutor, Assistant US AttorneyJohn Durham (pic) of Connecticut.

The investigation should be interesting, as the FBI has always disapproved of theCIA’s brutal interrogation methods. The Times suggested it could even be paybacktime for the often-ignored and overruled FBI.

* * *

Another area of interest in the torture controversy concerns the CIA’s “black sites”overseas, said to have been located in such places as Thailand, Poland, Romaniaand the British possession of Diego Garcia.

No doubt the talk of black sites by John Kiriakou (see my last post) is one reasonthe CIA wants to investigate the former CIA agent. Mother Jones has more about this.

The danger to the Bush administration of further black site disclosures is the subjectof a piece by John Dean in FindLaw’s Writ. It all hangs on the ACLU’s FOI suit againstthe CIA pending in US District Court in New York.

We also now know more about these CIA black sites, thanks to Muhamed Bashmilah,one of the plaintiffs in another ACLU lawsuit – the one against the Jeppesen Traveldivision of Boeing. Jeppesen arranged “flight services” for the CIA’s (shudder)extraordinary renditions.

Bashmilah’s detailed descriptions of his treatment at black sites is the basis fora report put out by NYU’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.

That’s the one run by an eminent Australian, the law professor Philip Alston (pic).

Middle East Times correspondent William Fisher has more on the NYU report and onblack sites generally.

* * *

There is yet another useful list that has been produced for 2008. It’s a statusreport on “GTMO and related” cases in Washington and elsewhere by David Remes, aleading member of the Guantanamo Bar Association.

Speaking of Guantanamo, the list of disaffected and departed Gitmo military officersis still growing.

First there was the incident in 2005 when three prosecutors from the Air Force JudgeAdvocates quit. Leigh Sales from your ABC had details of the third resignation.

They were later joined by the prosecutor Lt. Col. Stuart Couch and the defence counselLt. Col. Colby Vokey (pic).

Officers involved in holding the CSRTs, including Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, havebeen filing affidavits for detainees in their court cases, attesting to the unfairnessof the CSRTs.

Even the Chief Prosecutor, Moe Davis has quit in protest and like Col. Couch (seemy post of December 7, 2007), Col. Davis has been prevented from testifying to Congressby Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes.

Davis strongly attacked the Pentagon’s political interference in the commissions,in an LA Times op-ed.

Col. Morris Davis will not be going quietly. As he says:

“I’m not the first person associated with Guantanamo to be bound and gagged beforehaving cold water poured on him, although in my case it is intended to induce menot to talk.”

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